Create Your Game Plan for Success
In this episode we’re talking about developing the game plans to create success in different areas of life. Most people would just rather play the game…or watch the game. That’s a lot more fun than creating the game plans. But winning the game starts with a good game plan and then playing to the plan. Creating the right plans and the right plays…or as we like to call it, systems…are key to accomplishing your dreams and goals.
Can you imagine any sports team entering into competition without adequate preparation — or a game plan? Can you imagine showing up for the first day of practice and the coach saying, “Here’s your game schedule for the year. Your position is written on the first page. Just show up on time for each game and we’re gonna figure out how to whip the competition as we play.”
Sounds crazy?! It is! Yet that’s how many people go through life every day.
The failure to PLAN — to prepare a game plan — is one of the main reasons so many people fail in key areas of life. Certainly one of main reasons people fail in business or in their financial life. A key reason people fail to have the health or energy they want. And a key reason people fail in relationships.
Some people have never gone through a detailed planning process for something really important in their life. Others have done some planning. Some see it as a waste of time. Others think it’s something only certain people need to do for certain things.
Planning does take time. But it’s not a waste of time.
Done right, it’s worth every minute it takes. Your investment in strategic planning NOW will pay big benefits in the long run. Big benefits in both time and money.
Success is a Planned Event
Success is not accidental. It doesn’t just happen. Success is a PLANNED event.
A pilot needs a flight plan before getting off the ground.
A house needs a blueprint before construction begins.
A football team needs a strategy before playing the game.
And YOU need Planning Systems to build a successful life.
Planning means setting goals — both personal and professional. And in setting goals, I’m not just talking about how much money you’re gonna make by a certain date.
What’s Your Real Problem?
Do you think your number one problem is lack of money or lack of time? It’s not.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “That’s easy for you to say, Lonnie! It’s not YOUR checkbook you’re talking about!” It’s not your schedule you’re talking about!
Let me explain.
If you don’t have enough money to support your desired lifestyle, you have a problem with your money creation systems or money management SYSTEMS. Do you hear the distinction I’m making?
Lack of money isn’t the PROBLEM — it’s a SYMPTOM of poor money creation systems and/or poor money management systems.
In the same way, health is a SYMPTOM of doing the right things in the right way.
For example, health the result of a well-planned, well-managed physical, mental and emotional life. Focusing on just health will rarely accomplish your health goals. It’s no more a plan for success than simply saying you want to be more healthy will make you more healthy. Health is the result of doing the right things to make each system of your body work well and work well together.
What Do You Really Want?
Take an in-depth look at your life — every aspect of your life. Decide what you want to achieve in your financial life, your physical life, your business life, your relational life, your spiritual life. What you want your life to look like in each of these areas when it is at its optimal potential. How you want to be viewed by your friends and family…by your next generations when they sit around talking about great, great grandma or grandpa you.
What if you could write a plan of action for reaching your goals for each of these areas of your life? Call it a game plan if you will. Or charting your course. Or a blueprint.
Where Do You Want to Go?
But whatever you call it, you’ve got to first determine where you are now, where you want to go — and how you’re going to get there.
If you’re like most people, at some point in life, you had some big dreams and goals. There was something tangible or intangible that you wanted to see happen in these key areas of life.
But achieving your goals in any area of life means that area of you life has to continually grow. The challenge is we get stuck and get used to status quo.
What Does Growth Mean to You?
Growth to you might mean increasing your income by $50k this year? Or to you it might mean losing 20 pounds of fat and gaining 10 pounds of lean muscle. Or maybe growth to you has nothing to do with numbers. Maybe growth to you is about some quality or effectiveness you want in life. Maybe to you growth means having a passionate romance with your spouse that is stronger every year of marriage. Maybe growth to you is having adult kids who become better and better friends.
But regardless of HOW it grows, these key areas of our lives MUST grow — or move toward dying.
If you continue doing what you’ve been doing in any area of your life, the chances are pretty good that you’ll the same or worse outcomes in that area of your life.
The Growth Cycle
In fact whenever you start on a new course to pursue growth in some area of your life, I’ve found you’ll eventually go through — this cycle we’ve come to call the Growth, Plateau and Decline Cycle.
You’ll start your growth in that area for awhile, reach a plateau, then begin to decline.
Where are you in the natural growth life cycle now? Are you bouncing from place to place depending on what area you’re focused on at the time? It’s not unusual to move around a bit, but staying in the momentum stage is the optimum choice.
But that doesn’t just happen! The key to staying in the momentum stage is to plan for it — and put systems in place now so you can continue to succeed.
I know sometimes there is a bit of luck that goes into success…But the majority of the time luck has very little to do with success and when it does success that is real and sustainable usually happens when luck and preparedness meet.
How Success Happens
Success happens when opportunity and preparedness meet:
People who create a lasting success do it by planning for their success. There’s just too much that’s out of your control not to have plans in place. If you don’t think so, think again.
The fact is that change is on the horizon in just about every area of life now and if it isn’t now, it will be.
Changes in the economy, new technologies, changing relationship dynamics, new health challenges from age or sickness. and much more — are mostly — out of YOUR control. But that doesn’t mean you can’t exercise some control over your plans and process…what you plan to do and what you actually do in any are of your life to still make progress toward your goals, despite these external factors.
The Primary System for Success
Look, here’s a basic system for success. A successful person — for whatever area of their life that is important to them— creates clear plans for growth and improvement.
Then, if you begin to get slightly off course in that area of your life, you can respond quickly, get back on course, and still get where you want to go.
Did you know that a plane rarely stays exactly on course straight to the destination? There are way too many environmental changes to stay on course all the time.
In reality, the plane rides you take, even in big commercial planes, don’t stay exactly on the course they have plotted straight from point A to Point B.
The actual course of the flight looks more like this. It weaves back and forth across the straight course line as the pilot constantly corrects for wind and drift.
But do you still get to your destination? Of course! Does uncertainty and change minimize the value of planning? Absolutely not!
As I have coached business owners over the years many have asked me, “Why should I make a plan? There’s just way too much that’s out of my control in this industry.”
How would you like to fly on a plane with pilots who operated with that attitude?
“Flight 123 is cleared for take off.”
“This is your captain speaking. I hope we end up in Chicago today. We expect some high winds again so I didn’t file a flight plan. We never stay right on course anyhow, so it would be a waste of time to prepare one. I’m sure we’ll get to Chicago OK, though. Enjoy the flight.”
Sound ludicrous?
It’s no more ludicrous than when someone says, “I can’t plan because some things are just out of my control.”
That fact is that without the flight plan, the pilot wouldn’t know when the plane is off course — and he wouldn’t know how to get back ON course.
Your life plan allows you to respond quickly to changes in your environment.
The FAA made me file a flight plan in the first tiny Cessna I owned. And it made the pilot of the last flight you took on a jumbo jet file one, too.
Chart Your Own Course
Regardless of the size of your dreams for any area of life, regardless of the size of your bank account, regardless or the size of your business, regardless of the state of your health, you must file your flight plan. You have to chart your course.
Over the course of the next several podcasts we’re going to share with you our systems for success in planning. You’ll learn how to write your strategic plan for different areas of life…or for your business. But it won’t end there. Remember the old saying about life being a journey not a destination? Planning never ends. Not a once n done thing.
There’s always someplace better to go. A new level to go in your relationship. A new business or career goal to accomplish. A new level of inner joy or peace to attain. A new processes to improve. New people to mentor and develop.
Strategic planning will help you lay the foundation for a more successful life or business. This is the beginning of your systems for success journey.
TAKE ACTION:
After you listen to this podcast, take action on what you’ve just heard. You’ve taken the first step toward turning your dreams for our life into reality by at least listening to a podcast like this to hopefully inspire you a bit. But the best information or greatest inspiration won’t actually change anything in our lives unless we take some action on it…unless we do something about it. So, we’re going to challenge you at the end of each podcast to take some action on what you’ve heard. This is another system for success. Always try to take some action on something you’ve learned that you think could benefit your life or those around you within as short a time as possible after you hear or learn that information.
Where Have Your Super Dreams Have Become Your Settled for Realities?
Here’s the action we’re going to challenge you to take as soon as you finish listening to this podcast. Pick up your pen, your phone or computer and write down at least three things you’ve dreamed about for some area of your life but where you’ve gotten use to a much lower standard of reality than what you had dreamed of. Maybe you want to just pick one area of your life like your health or your finances and think of a few unfulfilled dreams. If you picked your finances, maybe at one point, you dreamed of creating residual income or multiple streams of income and you’ve just gotten used to working a 40 hour a week job trading time for dollars. Write down, “I dreamed of being financially independent by this age but I have settled for trading time for dollars.” Or if you pick the area of your relational life, maybe you write down “I dreamed of having a passionate romance in my relationship with my spouse but I have settled for just being parents and roommates and making life work”.
The task here is for us to get real with ourselves and identify the gap between our ideal vision for certain areas of our life and the reality you have become accustomed to.
Stare that reality straight in the face and ask yourself, do you really want to reality or do you want to reignite your vision bad enough that you are willing to do the hard work of creating plans and disciplining yourself to implement those plans to start moving toward your vision?